IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER

Marco Polo probably enjoyed a good plate of pasta, but he didn’t bring it back from
China. Marco, and plenty of other Italians, were already well acquainted with noodles. Archaeologists say the Etruscans were eating a version of pasta in about the fourth century B.C.E.
When Marco arrived in China, though, it’s likely the locals shared their noodles with him; Chinese art shows people eating them as far back as three thousand years ago. Nobody, though, was eating it with red sauce at that point. Tomatoes were a New World food, so spaghetti didn’t meet its mate until they arrived in Italy.
There were plenty of other ways to eat noodles, anyhow.
We know macaroni with cream sauce and cheese was a popular dish, because the colonists brought it with them to North America. The recipes that survive, though, probably require a tweak, because they suggest boiling the pasta for at least half an hour, which would be mush by modern standards.
Macaroni, overcooked or not, was a fancy dish at the time. So fancy a nickname for dandies was “Macaroni” – as in the fellow in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” who stuck a feather in his cap. Fancy, enough, too, for Thomas Jefferson to take an interest. He brought the first macaroni machine to the country in 1789.
By the mid-19th century, the people who really know their way around pasta had arrived in the U.S. Italian immigrants brought their own noodles and sauce. While the first industrial pasta factory was started in Brooklyn by a Frenchman in 1848 (they dried it on the roof!) – over the next century or so, it was Italian pasta dishes that became a key part of the American diet.
And they had red sauce!
The first tomato sauces start showing up in the ports of Naples and Sicily at the end of the 17th century, which makes sense since the red fruit landed there first. The name “marinara” came later, and it’s unclear why a seafood-free red sauce is named after sailors. My personal favorite origin story: the sailors’ wives invented it because they could make a good dinner on short notice when they spotted the ship coming in.
Pretty much as soon as Americans found out about Italian food, they pounced on it. (And no wonder, if you’re living on macaroni mush!) From the late 19th century, pizza and pasta grew into key parts of the American diet. The spaghetti dishes evolved over time, though.
As Italian families became more prosperous, the Neapolitan sailor’s simple plate of noodles and marinara evolved into “Sunday gravy,” the beloved, long-cooked, meat-rich extravaganza. As Bolognese sauce, it’s still a favorite at your local Italian restaurant.
Pasta, macaroni, and noodles aren’t just feast dishes, of course. In hard economic times, big pots of spaghetti, boxed mac and cheese, and ramen noodles keep plenty of families fed.
A good plate of spaghetti and red, with or without meatballs, is classic comfort food – and a plate full of history, besides. It might just be the one thing we can all agree on!

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